After a massive layoff at Lockheed Martin in 2014 where Craig Martell and his wife Laura worked, the couple went to a local sandwich shop to talk out their future. After a few minutes, they decided to move to Maine. They sold their northern Virginia home and settled on 158 acres of lightly logged woods in Waldoboro that they’d fallen in love with. Their idea was to build a small farm with a garden, flowers, and a few chickens and pigs. Laura got a job while Craig rolled up his sleeves to build their home, barns and sheds from scratch, taking on help only when it was absolutely needed. At the same time, they worked to restore the land by reverting the flow of water and filling in the ruts from the logging. Little by little, wildlife returned. Craig had studied finance and business and Laura, ocean engineering. Research is in their genes. After extensive study, they settled on Large Blacks, also known as Cornwall pigs. They bought a boar, two sows and a buddy piglet for the boar. But with each sow birthing 20 piglets each, they realized their hobby farm would be bigger than what they’d envisioned. Today Craig oversees more than 500 animals between pigs and chicken roasters. Greener Days Farm sells pork and roasters all over New England. Two Kangal dogs and seven boars protect the herds from predators. As Craig recognizes each day, farming may have small margins and days that never end, but he still cannot believe their good fortune.
Large Blacks have big, floppy ears that cover their eyes, so they move deliberately. But they don’t blow through fences. They also don’t hear that well so when they startle, they startle in the direction of others which means you can navigate with them easily. They have great sniffers for rooting for food. They can feel vibrations in their hooves so that if they run, they won’t crash into trees. A heritage breed like Large Blacks has a lot of historic knowledge. That’s why we love them. They have the genetics to survive summer and winter, and they farrow without us having to be involved. Our job is simply encouraging all of this.
I used to think that perfection meant feeding our pigs alfalfa and orchard grasss because I wanted them to have the best. But I was also curious about what they really liked to eat. So I created nine 20×20 squares of test plots in a massive grid, then fenced the pigs and watched them eat. They touched the alfalfa last, and that was by far the most expensive. So why was I spending all that money on what they ate last?
I figure you can either fight what grows naturally here and feed your pigs species native to South Carolina or Florida, or you can use what’s here, such as lamb’s quarters which is native, thrives on our farm and is super nutritious. Why fight nature?
We rotate our pigs from pasture to pasture and then give the pastures about a year to recover, because with pigs, their weight compresses the land. On the flip side, our pigs like to root, so they aerate the soil. And this balances things. Nature always likes to balance itself.
We get into problems when we try to be perfectionists. And on a farm, you can’t get perfection. The fencing can’t be 100% level. The rotations that we were doing every seven days were killing us, so now we do them every ten days. I’ve learned that when perfection drops away a little bit, your life gets better. And then we have more time to focus on the next project. It makes us more productive.
My ideal is to stop fighting nature and let her do 99% of the work. If we have a drought, so be it. We work with that. If we have lots of rain and so lots of mud, we move the pig shelters to higher ground. We work with whatever comes our way.
But COVID was hard on us. Suddenly the weight of the world dropped on us and on all the farms here. The phone started ringing and it didn’t stop. We could hear the desperation in people to lock in food. So, we went from five sows to over 30, practically overnight. Our workload exploded.
Outwardly I’m an optimist, but inwardly I’m a dweller. About five years ago we had a bad rainstorm, and that night I had a mom, her name was Poppy, farrowing. I checked on her around 10:30. She was standing, and she didn’t look comfortable and I wondered if I should move her. But Poppy was one of our best moms, so I thought, “Poppy’s got this.”
My instincts, though, were saying, “This is it an emergency.” Pigs dig and she’d created a little bathtub there. Inside that voice was saying, “Get a trailer up here, and get her out of this hut.” I could see it was flooding.
But then I thought, “If I do that, I’ll disrupt her calm and her space and everything she knows.” I returned to the house planning to move her in the morning.
When I got back the next morning, they’d all died, and Poppy was very sick. I was furious at myself. I still am.
Now, when I am worried about something, I don’t question it. I get out of bed right away, because if I give myself even three seconds, I’m not getting up. That’s how badly I want my sleep. So, I go out there right then and there, even if I’m in my underwear. I know if I think that I can wait a couple of hours, I’ve already failed.
It’s all those little decisions, those questions that keep me up at night. What is important and what’s not? What’s overkill? What is too much perfection? What are the risks? So, do I sleep much? Not.
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